Sen. Ted Cruz responded Thursday night after former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick posted a passage earlier on the Fourth of July from a famous speech by Civil War-era abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

The passage Kaepernick cites is from Douglass’ speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”

Douglass delivered to the speech at a meeting of the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society in Rochester, N.Y., on July 5, 1852 – nearly nine years before the Civil War began.

Kaepernick posted the following portion, without adding any comments: “What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? This Fourth of July is yours, not mine…There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.”